Strike a Pose

Open body language such as these sorts of postures signal strength, confidence and personal power.

These enhance leadership credibility too.

According to Professor Amy Cuddy at Harvard University, such open postures have a positive effect on our state of mind. Open postures significantly increase testosterone levels – the assertiveness hormone and decrease cortisol – stress and anxiety based hormone.

Simply put, open poses switch conscious attention to the ‘upstairs’ thinking parts of your brain, enabling you to think beyond fear and survival based reactive responses. Instead, you can access your ability to think through better options, possibilities and choices to perform at your best.

So by consciously adopting open inclusive postures for yourself you significantly enhance your overall positive state of mind and credibility.

For example, practising exaggerated ‘power’ poses (such as the wonder-woman pose) on your own in private for 2 minutes before an important event helps boost your feel-good factor.

Warning - don’t use the wonder-women power poses in front of others - it will back-fire on you and you will look a right d**k!

I'd love to help you and your team become more aware of your body language to boost your own leadership credibility.